Herriot and Helen’s first date

James Herriot and Helen Alderson’s first date is a hesitant but consequential beginning: an outing planned around a film about the Hebrides goes wrong almost at once, while Helen’s ease with the mishaps leaves Herriot with the certainty that there will be another meeting. The Darrowby Plaza offers neither the promised film nor the safe, polished romance he hoped for. Instead, the awkwardness becomes a measure of their growing comfort with one another.

The Invitation and Its Stakes

The date begins in a telephone call after news that Dan has got through the first stage of his treatment. Helen thanks Herriot for what he has done and explains how worried the family had been, especially her younger brother and sister. Herriot replies that he is delighted too and calls Dan a grand dog. He then makes his invitation: having passed the Plaza, he has seen that it is showing a film about the Hebrides and wonders whether Helen would like to go with him.

The approach is tentative enough to register physically. After Helen pauses, Herriot’s heart gives a quick thud; her answer, “All right,” followed by her suggestion of Friday night, releases the tension. He replaces the receiver with a trembling hand and reproaches himself for making such heavy weather of the invitation. The call has turned a conversation about Dan’s recovery into a first appointment, but the change is not effortless: Herriot must risk an uncertain answer before the relationship can move beyond possibility.

Arriving at the Plaza

Herriot’s choice of a cinema is partly an attempt to keep the outing manageable. He does not tell Tristan that he has arranged to meet Helen there, and he has taken precautions because his car might not get him somewhere on time—or get him there at all. The plan is deliberately simple: meet outside the cinema. That simplicity carries its own weight for Herriot, who remembers the humiliation of a childhood outing at fourteen, when a Glasgow tram conductor gave him his change in halfpennies and he had to pay for two shilling tickets with handfuls of copper. The embarrassment stayed with him for years, making this later first date another encounter shadowed by the possibility of looking foolish.

The Plaza itself seems poorly suited to a grand romantic entrance. Tucked between Pickersgills the ironmongers and Howarths the chemists, it has little architectural grandeur and an entrance scarcely wider than an ordinary shopfront. Herriot arrives in good time, though the show is due to begin in about ten minutes, and finds the building dark and apparently lifeless. The uncertainty of the venue extends the uncertainty he already feels about the evening.

Helen’s arrival briefly makes that uncertainty fall away. She picks her way across the market-place cobbles, smiling and waving as though the Darrowby Plaza were a treat in itself. Close by, her cheeks are softly flushed and her eyes bright. Herriot feels that everything is suddenly right and becomes convinced that nothing will spoil the night. Helen also tells him that Dan is running about like a puppy, with no trace of a limp; the dog’s recovery gives their meeting a direct connection to the earlier call and adds to Herriot’s happiness. But the cinema entrance remains blank and uninhabited, the first warning that the evening will not follow the script he has imagined.

The Wrong Film and the Evening’s Reversal

The film about the Hebrides is not what appears on screen. After a pause, the lights go out again, loud music begins, and the title Arizona Guns flashes up. Herriot turns to Helen in alarm, asking whether this is supposed to be the Scottish film they came to see. Helen confirms that it was, then explains that the supporting film is often changed without warning and that nobody seems to mind. She is willing to give the replacement a chance; Herriot, watching the same posse gallop past the same piece of rock for the fourth time, gives up hope of enjoying it.

The Western’s gunfire supplies a more immediate disturbance. Its deafening shots jerk Gobber awake, and he cries out and thrashes around with his arms. A backhander catches Herriot on the side of the head and drives him against Helen’s shoulder. He begins to apologise, but sees her face twitching and frowning before she breaks into silent, helpless laughter. The blow is an accidental intrusion into the intimacy Herriot hoped the cinema would provide; Helen’s response changes its meaning. Rather than treating the mishap as a failed performance of romance, she lets herself laugh at it fully, leaning back with her head against the seat, her legs stretched out and her arms dangling until the laughter has run its course.

The scene’s comic disorder does not produce an immediate declaration or a perfect evening. Gobber falls asleep again, his snores competing with the bangs and howls from the screen; Herriot still does not know who the little man in front is, and he senses that the disturbances may not be over. The clock remains at twenty past four, Maggie is still staring at them, and sweat runs down Herriot’s back. The date is marked less by the film than by its repeated failure to become the controlled, romantic occasion he had planned.

A Beginning, Not a Perfect Date

After she has recovered from laughing, Helen puts a hand on Herriot’s arm and suggests, “Next time, why don’t we just go for a walk?” The suggestion is both practical and affirmative: the cinema has proved a poor setting, but she is already speaking of seeing him again. Herriot settles back as Gobber sleeps and the Western continues. He admits to himself that the environment is not all he could have desired, but the prospect of another meeting matters more than the defects of this one.

The date therefore ends in a small but unmistakable change of expectation. Herriot had hoped that the Plaza would provide a safe, dark intimacy; beforehand, he had even regarded choosing it as a way of avoiding the uncertainties of a more exposed encounter. The actual evening supplies darkness, but not the Scottish film, quiet, or control he sought. Instead, Helen’s cheerful arrival, her willingness to tolerate the wrong programme, and her laughter at the mishap establish a more mutual ease. Her proposed walk gives the evening its forward motion: their first date is awkward, but it is not a dead end. For Herriot, there is going to be a next time.